"...never take your menstruating mistress to Red Lobster on a Saturday."

[Silent3]

I continue to be amazed at the combination of ignorance and/or apologetic mental gymnastic it must take to believe the Bible is literally true, and the stunning hypocrisy required to go on doing so much stuff that's literally forbidden while selectively foaming at the mouth over gays and abortion.

Religion: It’s Complicated

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Wow. To the point, accurate, and succinct.

Gotta love it.

[mysuzuki2]

2. There's a recent book "The Year of Living Biblically"

by AJ Jacobs. He actually spends a year trying to follow the Bible exactly. It's very enlightening. The part where he tries to stone someone is especially hilarious!

[Silent3]

7. I looked the book up on Amazon

It certainly sounds interesting, but the author has got to be a much more patient and forgiving sort than myself. It seems he took a lot of the rules and rituals far more seriously and reverently that I could ever manage to do.

[Control-Z]

14. Clearly, it would be much easier

for a man to follow "the word" than a woman. Not to mention, stay clean, be clean, become clean, not be filthy! (I'm just assuming it was a man who tried this.)

[mysuzuki2]

16. that was kind of the whole point of the book

how utterly impractical it would be to take the bible literally. The book was about his struggle to apply the bible to the real world. It is well worth reading.

[Silent3]

17. I get that. My point is that it's difficult for me to imagine my reaction...

...as being similar to the author's: "In the end, he says, 'I'm now a reverent agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred.' Not a bad outcome."

I can agree with the author that life is "sacred", although that's hardly the word I'd use, and that would simply be an attitude I already hold surviving the experience of "Living Biblically" for a year. The author comes away from this experience, apparently, with some respect and admiration for the people he runs into who try to do at least some of the ridiculous Bible-based things he was trying to do during that year. It's hard for me to imagine my own reaction being anything other than increased despair regarding the irrationality and superstition of our species.

[Warpy]

3. They can do that only if they've never sat down and read all of it.

Of course, sitting down and reading all of it is not conducive to keeping one's faith intact.

Most people compartmentalize the nonsense away from what it takes them to get through a day of work and family stuff. They never question the nonsense and the nonsense gives them a feeling of safety.

My mother's reaction when she finally sat down and read the whole bible was hilarious and typical: she was outraged that it had been used to bully her all during her life, at the selective reading by priests, and at the superstition surrounding it that said non church officials didn't have the wisdom to read it. She never set foot in a church again.

[FiveGoodMen]

6. "reading all of it is not conducive to keeping one's faith intact"

I think a poll would reveal that about half of the atheists arrived at their lack of belief by reading the whole thing.

It certainly changed my mind.

[Warpy]

13. You and my mother

She was angry by the end of it. It really was pretty hilarious.

I never did find out what made my dad an unbeliever. He dropped that bomb on his death bed and I didn't want to grill him about it.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

15. The whole thing? Hell, a few selected chapters are more than enough. -nt

[Still Blue in PDX]

18. That's what changed my mind, as well.

The first time I read it with a little publication called "The Daily Walk" that had a Christian spin put on each day's reading. It was the second time through that the absurdities jumped out at me.

[Kber]

12. in 1950 my Grandmother's Church based book group decided to tackle the Bible

"old" and "new" testaments, over a 12 month period.

They read sections, researched the history and commentary, and discussed and debated the various translations.

The final effect was the "conversion" of a group of dedicated Christian women to atheism.

My grandmother was an intelligent woman who prided herself on her reliance on logic and reasoning to make her decisions, concluded that she really didn't have any other choice.

[JackintheGreen]

4. It's a conglomeration of books

written to/for different people of different nations and cultures over a period of centuries. How can Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which was probably written at the end of the 1st century CE, be understood in the same way as, say, Deuteronomy (a favorite of literalists because of its purported hating of 'teh gays')? Not only did the the same socio-culutral structures NOT pertain to both audiences, but neither did the same general understanding of how the world works. It's exactly the same bunkum that prompts people to interpret the Constitution at the beginning of the 21st century as it must surely have been intended at the end of the 18th century.

[Silent3]

5. It's God Magic

That's all a believer needs to believe. God "inspired" every step of putting together whichever version of the Bible a literalist wants to get literal about (typically the King James Bible, at least in the US in my experience). God made the particular disparate collection of books come together, God made the translators translate the way they translated, etc.

[JackintheGreen]

8. You don't have to tell me about "god magic"

My mother is a VERY LIBERAL Presbyterian pastor who almost left the church due to local synod (Midwestern) interpretations of the Bible. She had in her last parish a King James literalist with whom she was constantly at loggerheads.

I personally cannot fathom the mentality that subscribes to such devotion. The utter lack of historical awareness, the hubris required just escapes me (and the reverend my mom). Her sermons were always a riot for me because she would stand in the pulpit of her small, midwestern town and refer back to the Hebrew to clarify translations in the KJ or NRSV or whatever version she was pulling from before railing against her parish for not being Christ-like (you know, like basically socialist). Funny funny stuff.

[salinen]

9. fine

I'll take my menstruating mistress to Taco Bell.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

10. "The Bible is a big, messy, ambiguous book of dubious origin."

From the comments. Well said.

[Silent3]

11. Oh, I forgot. My apologies...

...to all of those who will find pointing out this sort of Biblical absurdity way too unsophisticated for their oh-so-deep, refined, and intellectual understanding of religion and belief. We already know that you're sooooooo beyond that. :)